Word: rhesus
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Dates: during 1940-1949
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...called because it was first found in the blood of rhesus monkeys...
This theory turned out to be true. The doctors proved it conclusively by exposing cut nerve ends of Rhesus monkeys to the virus of human polio. They then separated the slender neurotubules a little way up the nerve and examined them under the electron microscope. Some of them were full of tiny round specks not present in healthy nerves. By extracting the nerve samples at different times, the doctors proved that the particles crept slowly up the nerve from the point of entry. They moved about 2 mm. (1/12 inch) an hour-roughly the rate that polio infection is known...
...believer in hunches, Dr. Shortt tackled the puzzle with conventional research methods. In a laboratory near St. Albans, Hertfordshire, he shut a rhesus monkey into a cage with 500 malaria-carrying mosquitoes (previous experiments had used 20 to 100). Just to make sure that the monkey would hatch a really bad case, he killed the mosquitoes, made a solution out of them, and injected it into the monkey's muscles and chest. No other monkey had ever been so swamped with malaria. After seven days Dr. Shortt performed a careful autopsy. Said he: "I went over every conceivable piece...
...until the late 1920s that an experimental animal, the rhesus monkey, was found susceptible to yellow fever...
...factor (so named because it was first discovered in rhesus monkeys) is a mysterious, hereditary component of red blood cells. Rh positive and Rh negative cells are sometimes incompatible; if Rh cells have been sensitized to the Rh factor, mixing them results in antibodies which either break down the Rh positive cells (causing anemia and jaundice) or produce clots (blocking circulation...